Sunday, February 25, 2007

More Big Labor Thuggery

Instead of addressing fundamental competitiveness issues in the U.S. education, regulatory, tort, and tax systems, the new majority in Congress is bent on re-unionizing the economy.

On the heels of passing a minimum wage increase, the House is teeing up the next item in Senator Ted Kennedy’s union agenda: card check legislation.

Of course, expanding union membership has direct benefits for Democrat leaders, who exploit forced union dues as a major source of campaign funding.

Kennedy’s bill, officially titled the “Employee Free Choice Act,” will actually reduce workplace fairness and democracy. Under current law, when unions attempt to organize a workplace, employees usually vote by secret ballot in a government monitored election. This process of debate and private vote is, however, unacceptable to union bosses who often lose in a fair workplace election. The unions want to be able to demand that workers make a public decision in front of a union organizer - literally, "checking a card" instead of having the right to a private vote.

Obviously, card check removes privacy protections for employees. It opens the workplace to intimidation and corruption, and to say the least, is a violation of the American principle of a secret ballot.

A variation on this concept is what got a union into the plant where I work. Suffice it to say the unit employees who voted against unionization were not happy. Indeed, if a decertification vote were taken today the union would be tossed right back out, but good luck on jumping through all the bureaucratic and procedural hoops it would take to even attain such a vote. Unions are just like their Donk patrons: once they're in power, they make it impossible to ever get rid of them.

Shockingly, this legislation has 234 cosponsors – more than a majority of the House - and is expected to pass the House next week.

Doesn't shock me. There are 235 Democrats in the House, but I would be shocked if some of those co-sponsors aren't from the burgeoning RINO class.

Can forty-one Senate Pachyderms be mustered to filibuster the Labor Disenfranchisement Act? Theoretically, yes; realistically? Don't count on it. Even the Donks didn't block everything the past six years, and there'll be a lot worse fish frying than Uncle Teddy's Big Labor lap dances this biennium.